Payments Canada, the Bank of Canada, TMX Group and Accenture have demonstrated that the instantaneous clearing and settlement of securities on-ledger is feasible.
The initiation of Project Jasper, a joint venture between the parties, has shown that both central bank cash and assets can be tokenised to complete an instant, end-to-end equity settlement on distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Project Jasper is a research initiative between Payments Canada, the Bank of Canada and TMX group to experiment with an integrated securities and payment settlement platform based on DLT.
Jasper III, a continuation of previous work launched in March 2016, is a proof of concept that was delivered by Accenture, leveraging R3’s Corda DLT platform.
It explores the impact and potential benefits of DLT on broader Canadian financial market infrastructure.
According to Payments Canada, Jasper III is currently the only proof of concept that maintains privacy for market participants and their transactions by giving only the parties involved in specific transactions the ability to view the transaction history, without providing the same visibility to other participants on-ledger.
Gerry Gaetz, president and CEO of Payments Canada, said: “This proof of concept shows that it is possible to deliver payments in a way that has never been done before—by directly swapping cash from buyers to sellers, resulting in instant settlements.”
He added: “We continue to see how the application of DLT can help extend the vision of payments innovation in Canada and potentially, one day, help promote financial market integration, both nationally and internationally.”
John Lee, managing director of enterprise innovation and product development at TMX Group, commented: “We have witnessed an impressive achievement and an important financial technology milestone for Canadian capital markets with the successful transaction of tokenised securities and cash in their basic forms.”
He added: “Many complex challenges remain as we move ahead, but we look forward to the crucial collaborative work necessary to effect substantive, transformative change in global markets.”
Carolyn Wilkins, senior deputy governor at the Bank of Canada, said: “Maintaining privacy, as well integrating other assets onto the same ledger as payments, would provide important benefits for the financial system from the use of a DLT-based wholesale payment system.”
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